TRAVELER'S REFRAIN Review
TRAVELER'S REFRAIN
You're a musician looking for someone from your past. Armed with your trusty lute you must master the art of song casting on this perilous adventure. You use the lute to heal, fight and solve puzzles. Can you master the 4 strings of destiny?
The Good
- Great voiceovers in cut scenes
- Art is sublime
- Lots of puzzles
The Not-So-Good
- The lute ultimately fails to live up to expectations
- Level design is clunky
Story
A narrative-heavy story where you play as a character simply called Traveller. This character-driven tale explores his past whilst navigating his present. Armed with his trusty lute, you must find a way to explore your current setting and find your mysterious love.
As Traveller you explore different worlds and regions on your quest. There's a central area which you pass through a few times where you get to learn more about other people you meet along the way. You're tasked with some simple fetch and find missions to help further the story and progress your story arc whilst saving and helping other factions you meet along the way.
Gameplay
The lute is the key gameplay mechanic I want to touch on. Initially it's a well-implemented mechanic and pretty satisfying. However as you progress and learn more songs to cast, it falls a little flat. It's a little too complicated to remember certain songs and occasionally too forced for it to be fun or useful. Boss battles would be my main example - some of them aren't easy and short of healing yourself, the other songs aren't effective enough to use them mid-battle. For me I'd rather have seen an ability wheel with a cooldown. Some might say that's too simple, however the current way takes a little bit of fun out of the combat element. Otherwise the game has smooth controls that are reactive and satisfying. Your character can feel a bit floaty at points but this is more due to some of the animations than the actual controls.
During the game you collect red orbs that act as levelling currency for your abilities. These orbs are scarce so you have to be selective about what you level up early on. You also get Totems along the journey to help with your base character abilities - these are simple but effective power-ups such as extra health and sped-up stamina regen.
Visuals & Design
A unique hand-painted art style features thousands of hand-painted frames and animations by industry veteran Nik Hagialas (Disney and D&D). The art is wonderfully crafted and reminds me of Hades in many ways.
Performance
The game runs smoothly across all platforms with no major performance issues noted during gameplay.
Value
I'd wait for a sale for this one. It's got plenty of content but with potentially frustrating mechanics, not everyone will stick with it until the end.
Score Breakdown
Story
Gameplay
Visuals
Performance
Value
Overall Score
Final Verdict
Traveler's Refrain isn't a terrible time with a game but ultimately it falls short of something really satisfying. With a few small tweaks I think this would be another indie hit, but as it stands it's a little off-key.
If you like adventure RPG games with quirky mechanics this could be for you. The story is interesting and gameplay on the whole is satisfying enough, especially if you can get it in a sale. There's plenty of content and puzzles to be solved.
